Posted on 09/08/2018 3:51:22 PM PDT by Twotone
In a line much quoted since his death on Thursday, Burt Reynolds observed, "I may not be the best actor in the world, but I'm the best Burt Reynolds in the world." And he was. It made him a huge box-office star in the Seventies, and thus the best Burt Reynolds in the world cruised amiably through Smokey and the Bandit, Cannonball Run and variants thereof for a hugely lucrative decade. He took his bankability and invested it in things he liked - a football team, a petting zoo, and a lovely little theatre in Jupiter, Florida. Squire to an impressive variety of desirable women (Judy Carne, Dinah Shore, Sally Field, Loni Anderson), Burt Reynolds was indisputably the best Burt Reynolds he could be, until various health issues took their toll in recent years. Nevertheless, before he became Burt Reynolds in full but after a long apprenticeship in "Gunsmoke", "Flipper" and far worse, he turned in a pretty terrific acting performance in the 1972 film that made him a bona fide star.
In 1970 the poet James Dickey wrote a first novel about a canoeing trip in the wilds of Georgia that goes awry. The British director John Boorman read it, liked it, and made a film of it two years later, roping in Dickey for the screenplay and a cameo as the sheriff of a condemned rural county about to be buried underwater by a new dam. John Boorman has made several splendid films in the years since; James Dickey went back to poetry and didn't write a second and third novel until half a decade before his death; but neither man ever again planted something in the popular consciousness the way they did with this picture, and its instantly recognizable one-word title.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Enjoyed the “X Files” episode he did.
Mark is freaky smart and hilarious. Love him when he subs for Rush. You can’t passively listen, just when you’ve gotten his humor he’s already two steps ahead
Clark Gable. John Wayne. Ward Bond. James Garner. Burt Reynolds.
Whom do we have now? Ryan Gosling. Bradley Cooper.
Well, we do have Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt, but still...
I prefer him to Rush. I know: no show without Rush, but it is truth.
Agreed. He had chops, he just preferred to have fun.
Steyn the thinker and writer doesn’t get the credit he deserves.
You sure have a pretty mouth he said to Jon Voight.
Farewell, Burt. You were an American classic. I’m kind of partial to “Hustle” myself. A damned fine picture.
Whatever its artistic merits, “Deliverance” gave urban Americans a memorable, false image of rural America.
I was waiting for Steyns’s eulogy of art Reynolds. He didn’t disappoint.
I had lived in North Georgia for 14 years when that movie(Deliverence) was in the theaters. I thought that the script writers may have been from the Village in New York City. Weirdest off base movie I have ever seen. The Amityville movie made better sense.
Good movie. What makes it memorable to me is the ending. They got away with it, but not in the mind. That aspect is unusual imo.
The film was easy for you to ignore, because you knew from personal experience how false it was. Many urban Americans, myself included, thought it realistically depicted a nearly world that we had never seen before. "Deliverance" was our introduction to the bizarre natives of flyover country.
It wasn't until I spent a long time in rural America that I lost my Deliverance-inspired paranoia.
It was a "very good" film. I wish I had never seen it.
nearly > nearby
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